FILE - In this Friday, Sept. 14, 2012 file photo, Libyan followers of Ansar al-Shariah Brigades chant anti-U.S. slogans during a protest in front of the Tibesti Hotel, in Benghazi, Libya, as part of widespread anger across the Muslim world about a film ridiculing Islam's Prophet Muhammad. Ansar al-Shariah is among the most powerful of the heavily armed militias that the government relies on to keep security in Benghazi. Suspicion in the deadly attack that killed the American ambassador to Libya on Sept. 11 has focused on members of a hardcore Islamist militia known for its sympathies to al-Qaida, its fierce animosity to the U.S. and its intimidation of Muslims who don't conform to its strident ideology. (AP Photo/Mohammad Hannon, File)

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White House officials are now insisting that President Barack Obama has always treated the Sept. 11 strike in Benghazi, Libya as a terrorist attack by jihadis.

“Well, first of all, Candy, as you know, the president called it an act of terror the day after it happened,” President Barack Obama’s chief campaign strategist David Axelrod told CNN’s Candy Crowley Sept. 30.

Gov. Mitt Romney is citing the Benghazi attack to buttress his criticism of Obama’s Muslim-outreach policy, which has helped Islamic radicals use elections to win control of majority-Muslim countries including Egypt, Tunisia and Turkey.

On Sept. 11, so-far-unidentified jihadis hit the lightly guarded and unfortified office in Benghazi on the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 atrocity.

The day after the attack, Obama spoke in the Rose Garden in ambiguous terms that did not include explicitly labeling it as a jihadi or terrorist attack.

“The United States condemns in the strongest terms this outrageous and shocking attack,” Obama said.

“Yesterday was already a painful day for our nation as we marked the solemn memory of the 9/11 attacks [in 2001] … And then last night, we learned the news of this attack in Benghazi. … No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation [or] alter that character.”

That statement can be read as an acknowledgement that the Benghazi attack was a terror strike, just as the 9/11 terror attack was.

But over the following week, administration officials — including the president and his ambassador to the United Nations — spun the attack as a byproduct of a spontaneous riot caused by a “natural” reaction to a little-viewed YouTube video that ridiculed the Muslim prophet Muhammad.

On Sept 14, for example, White House press secretary Jay Carney repeatedly suggested the video prompted protests that led to the Benghazi attack.

“We have no information to suggest that it was a pre-planned attack,’ he said. “The unrest we’ve seen around the region has been in reaction to a video that Muslims, many Muslims, find offensive.”

On Sept. 26 however, the White House gave ground and acknowledged the attack was launched by jihadi terrorists.

That election-season concession came amid a rush of media reports describing the jihadi groups, the lack of significant security at the facility, the withdrawal of nearly all embassy officials from Libya, U.S. intelligence assessments and the failure of an FBI investigation team to even fly into Libya by late September.